Greasy Fingerprints of Kindness

You might think that you don’t matter in this world, but because of you,

someone has a favorite mug to drink their tea out of that you bought them.

Someone hears a song on the radio and it reminds them of you.

Someone has read a book you recommended to them and gotten lost in its pages.

Someone’s remembered a joke you told them and smiled to themselves on the bus.

Never think you don’t have an impact.

Your fingerprints can’t be wiped away from the little marks of kindness that you’ve left behind.

Yesterday I had a chance to catch up a little with an old friend. He used to be my best friend but life and our mental illnesses happened and for many different reasons we haven’t talked in nearly a year. But the visit was nice and much needed and left me feeling really good about a situation that has given me much anxiety and a lot of bad feelings for a really long time. I felt healed. And it only took a year. Feelings are especially fucking hard for some of us.

The point, though, is that even though I had bad feelings about this friend his fingerprints of kindness were still on my heart over the last year and always will be. One of my favorite songs is a song that he recommended to me. A song that made him feel all the feels even in the dark times when the feels were hard to feel. And every time I hear it I think of him and feel a little happier. Or at least I feel something, which if you have struggled with depression you know is a welcome thing. And when I am having an especially hard time I intentionally play it and I think of why I love it and why I love him. That is a gift he gave me that will be with me always.

There are many other things that remind me of him daily. Good things mostly. And the more I started thinking about this particular friend the more I realized how true that passage is. Our interactions with people leave a mark. Whether it is a gift or a trinket we gave them, an experience we shared, a joke we told, a kindness we did. We leave our mark. And somewhere out there someone is probably thinking of you fondly. Every day.

So never forget you matter. Just by being human and having relationships and interacting with people you leave a mark. And you are important. To someone but probably to many.

So today do something to leave a fingerprint of kindness in somebody’s life. I try to do things like this as often as I can. Send a card, bake a treat, text someone a cheesy joke, tell someone you love them, or if you see something you know a friend would totally dig buy it for them (or send them a picture of it if you can’t afford it because really it is the thought that counts).

Cover people’s lives with the kind of greasy fingerprints of kindness that they have to scrub like fuck to get off.

Leave your mark of love.

And if you can’t do that today because you are just too tired maybe try to see some of the fingerprints that have been left on your life by others. It will help you to remember it is worth it to keep going.

Consider this your pep talk of the day.

Love to you all, the unconditional kind

❤

p.s. The song is Cloud Cult “There’s So Much Energy in Us”. Check it out here and consider it my little gift to you for today: Best Song Ever

Welcome

In yoga they always tell us that when thoughts or noises interrupt our practice we should notice them, let them exist without judgement, and let them go. I have adopted this mentality with a lot of things in my life and it has been invaluable. Everybody gets to make their choices and I get to make mine. I do not have to have control over what anybody else is doing and that is okay. They can do their thing, I can do mine and I do not have to judge that. It is all okay. My therapist told me I needed a mantra and I had a hard time coming up with one but lately I’ve been using “Let that shit go”. I think it is a nice combination of the calm, namaste-yoga stuff and my love of swear words. Feel free to use it if it helps you.